Homeless alone: life on the streets for London’s forgotten Scots
MORE THAN 10 PER CENT OF UK-BORN HOMELESS PEOPLE SLEEPING ON THE STREETS OF LONDON ARE SCOTS. AS WINTER APPROACHES, LIAM O’HARE FINDS OUT WHY SO MANY END UP ON THERE AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP TO THEM
IT’S 9 o’clock on a Monday morning in central London. Weary workers are rushing to their offices. Tourists are beginning to flock to Trafalgar Square. Civil servants head down Whitehall to their jobs. Just a few yards away, dozens of people are piling out of The Connection at St Martin’s, the city’s busiest homeless charity. They’ve spent the night sleeping on the centre’s floor and are leaving to face another day on the cold streets.
Among them is 66-year-old John from Clydebank. He’s carrying a Sport Direct bag with all his belongings inside. He first came to London in 1968, when he was just 18.
“It first started with a break up in the family,” he says. “I preferred to live with my father than my mother. He was my drinking partner. We used to go to the pub and play dominoes. When he died, I went to do my own thing. At that time it was really violent around Clydebank. I was getting involved with gangs and things like that. I was going to end up stabbed or locked up, so I jumped on a bus down to London.”
John has travelled all around the south of England, to places like Cornwall, Canterbury and Kent. For the majority of years he has slept rough.
I’m introduced to him by Alec Lavin, an outreach worker for the charity Borderline, an organisation set up to specifically help homeless Scots in London. It traces its origins as far back as the 1700s when it was the Church of Scotland-run Caledonian Christian Club, helping St Andrews University students find cheap accommodation in London.
Fast forward to the 1980s when homelessness was at its peak in London. Over 200 people, many of them Scots, slept rough next to Waterloo Station in what was known as Card- board City. The Church realised that perhaps helping St Andrews students was no longer a priority and opened up its work, becoming The Church of Scotland London Advisory Service before Borderline was eventually formed in 1990.
These days Lavin, originally from Edinburgh, is Borderline’s man at the coalface. He deals with clients on a daily basis identifying their needs and doing his best to meet them. Often it’s people facing issues such as addiction, mental health or violence. And according to him, stories like John’s are pretty common.
“Ask yourself why somebody is in London,” he says, “They don’t want to be in Scotland. They’re here for a reason. It can be a multitude of reasons but often it’s got something to do with family.” INDEED, one of the charity’s main aims is to reconnect them with people back in Scotland. John has two brothers who still live in Cumbernauld. Has he ever tried to get back in touch with them? “Aye, five years ago,” he says. “It was a flying visit. I won some money so I got the megabus up. I even had some money to give to them for food and rent. But I went to the last address I had for them and there was a new name on the door. They’d all moved somewhere else so I turned around and came all the way back down again.”
At this point Lavin interjects saying that once they get John settled indoors somewhere, Borderline can start look into making contact with his family again. “But it’s your call, John,” he adds.
“I’ll let you know,” replies John, “But maybe I’m better just leaving them alone and letting them get on. I’m better on my own… I’m really bet- ter on my own.”
But there is a tremor in John’s voice as he repeats himself, as if he is trying to convince himself of the benefits of still going it alone. The pain, however, is unmistakable.
But John is not completely alone in London. He tells us of how he’s looking forward to catching up with his pal Tam later. They like to take over the kitchen at another accommodation for the homeless they often stay at, run by St Mungo’s and known as The Lodge.
“Me and Tam did all the bacon last week and it was perfect for the Sunday dinner. They’ve got me booked for next week as well. Jacket potato and beans, I’m thinking,” he smiles.
As we’re leaving, Lavin notices his bare wrist and asks him what happened to his watch, a rare possession The Lodge had helped him to buy after he said it would be the thing most useful to him.
“Ach, I had to sell it,” he replies, “I needed the money.”
With that, John heads off towards Trafalgar Square while Lavin and I make the short walk towards Covent Garden to look for Archie, another one of his clients. After hunting around a bit we eventually find him perched on a windowsill of the London Transport Museum, alongside his dog Benny.
Like John, Archie’s journey to the streets of London comes as a result of family breakdown. “My dad was a total sod,” he explains in a broad Fife accent that clearly hasn’t changed a bit since he moved to London at the age of 20 in 1986.
“He kicked me out when I was 16. I went to stay with my mother. When she came at me with a knife I left home and I’ve been on the streets since. I had to get away from my family.”
Archie rarely sleeps in hostels, largely because he has trouble finding one that will allow him to stay with Benny. So instead he scours Westminster to find dry sheltered spots for them to get their heads down for the night.
“It’s not easy on the streets,” he admits. “You get the occasional idiot that tries to hassle you. And you’ve got the cold winters but you can get through it if you’ve got the right sleeping bag. Don’t get me wrong though, you get pissed off. It can be cold as hell. I’ve got four discs in my back that are knackered. Carrying the rucksack every day doesn’t help. It’s weighs about 23 kilos… it’s got mine
Scots will continue to come to London for one reason or another. Often it’s young men fleeing violence, gangs or abuse. Sometimes they can’t go back and need our support. We are helping people and we need the Scottish government funding
and the dog’s sleeping bag in it.”
It’s clear that for Archie, the companionship of his dog is vitally important to him. The last time he was involved in a fight was when someone kicked Benny while they were both sleeping. “My dog’s more comfortable than me,” he laughs. “My motto? Spoil the dog before it dies.”
Archie rarely makes it back to Scotland. But the last time he did was when his old dog died. He buried it under a tree on the Fife farm where he grew up.
The problem of homeless Scots in London is not a new one. For generations and a multitude of reasons, people have been drawn to the capital and ended up on the streets. In most cases, alcohol plays some role. In 2013, to aid the provision of its services, Borderline conducted research to find out how many of the capital’s homeless were Scottish.
The findings were revealing. They discovered that 12 per cent of UKborn homeless in the city are Scottish. For comparison, roughly two per cent of the total UK-born population of the city come from Scotland. Essentially you’re more than six times more likely to find a Scot among the homeless community than among those who are housed.
Scots also spend longer on the streets than those from elsewhere in the UK. Research by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) found that 37% of Scottish homeless have been rough sleeping for a minimum of two consecutive years, compared to 26% of all UK homeless.
“Scots are massively over-represented,” Shona Fleming, Borderline’s CEO explains to me in the charity’s offices on City Road. They share the premises and resources with ScotsCare, an organisation set up to support securely housed Scots facing financial hardship in the city. RECENTLY, Borderline has faced some financial hardship of its own. The £57k annual funding from the Scottish government, which represented 30 per cent of the charity’s income, was cut last year. The funding had helped to support the role of the Scottish outreach worker. Without it, the charity says the continuation of the post is under threat.
“For seven years the Scottish government did support us massively,” Fleming says, “The funding has been absolutely crucial to our work. When we found that was to be discontinued, well, to say we were disappointed would be an understatement.”
The charity will be applying for funding again next year. But at a time when the block grant is getting cut, can the Scottish government really afford to support services outside Scotland?
“I understand that we might be seen as less of a priority as we’re not a service based in Scotland,” Fleming explains. “But our problem is that we don’t get any help in England either because we’re seen as too exclusive due to only helping Scots. And my view is that Scots away from home are far more vulnerable than those in Scotland.
“Scots will continue to come to London for one reason or another. Often it’s young men fleeing violence, gangs or abuse. Sometimes they can’t go back and need our support. We are helping people and we need the Scottish government funding.”
Before I leave the office I bump into Glenn, a former client of Borderline who now volunteers with the charity. A former sales worker, he ended up homeless in 2012 after a bout of severe depression set events in his life off on a downward spiral.
He’s since found accommodation and is back looking for work. For people like Glenn, the charity has been a critical source of support. But the memories of those few months sleeping between Hyde Park and Heathrow Airport remain raw.
“It was the worst period of my whole life,” he said. “You feel so alone. You don’t have a roof over your head. You don’t have an identity or respect. You are walking about basically waiting to die. I mostly felt a sense of embarrassment that I was in that situation in the first place.”
Beyond Glasgow and Edinburgh, London has more Scots living in it than any other city. With the questions of the constitution and independence still lingering in the air, it’s possible that a day will come in the not too distant future when a Scottish embassy opens up in London. In the meantime though, for the Scots homeless there is the small office just north of the River Thames that houses Borderline.
But unlike Glenn, not all the stories have a happy ending. Plenty more Scots remain isolated, chewed up and spat out by the often harsh London metropolis.
They are the people who spend their days wandering the streets and their nights sleeping rough in damp doorways and park benches. They are victims of abuse, addiction and violence who remain in dire need of society’s help and support. They are the people who left home under a cloud and whose pride or shame stops them attempting to reconnect. They are our brothers and sisters, uncles and cousins. They are John,